He’d then turned to the woman in the wheelchair. “And that means you, Miss Blue—”

“It’s Freda, Mr. Martin. It’s what your great-grandfather called me.”

“Means you’re super, super old.”

They’d been outraged and thrilled all at once. William’s father and brothers had practically flipped the table, they were so angry that no one knew. Quincy had just held up his hands. “William knew you’d all be mad. But he’s still not convinced he isn’t a threat. Even though the world has stopped being a crap show for a while now. But my plane is ready for you, Mr. and Mrs. Chance, and your sons. But for now, that’s all William wants as visitors.”

Lynn had been heartbroken, confiding in Quincy that she felt that William blamed her somehow. But the big man had only taken her hands in his own. “Don’t you see it, Lynn? He’s afraid. He’s afraid that somehow, he’ll awaken whatever’s in you.”

“But it’s not there anymore,” she’d said. “He changed us. Changed us all back to what we were. It’s gone.”

Anne and Chris had returned with the boys two weeks later. Lynn tried to show a brave face. “The baby is so beautiful. But he’s not coming back, Mom. He said he never will.”

A year later, Quincy had sent his plane with a simple message for her: “William wants his grandmother to meet his son.”

So Lynn and Roxy had boarded Quincy’s luxury plane and headed for, of all places, the eastern Caribbean. He warned her again that this was no tropical paradise.

She’d understood William’s reasoning: He wanted a place so remote that no one, especially the world’s press, desperate to understand the return of the missing and the disasters, could ever find him. Or his new family.

Lynn looked at the woman driving the Jeep. “You work as a doctor here? Who takes care of the baby?”

She gave Lynn an amused smile. “William does, of course. It takes a village is a way of life here. You’ll see.”

They drove on rough dirt roads, the branches of trees sometimes smacking the sides of the Jeep. The sight of butterflies weaving among the leaves helped to calm Lynn’s racing heart.

“There are paved roads that lead to the resorts, and I’m sorry we can’t take them,” Jane yelled.

“Where do you live?” Roxy asked from the back seat.

“We’re not far now,” she said, pulling onto an even rougher road, blanketed by shadows. Navigating the potholes, apologizing profusely to Lynn for the bumping, she took another turn and stopped.

William had forbidden his father and brothers from taking pictures, but they’d described the home. A shack, Brian had complained.

But it wasn’t. In fact, Lynn could tell it was sturdy. William had always taken to manual labor.